This invention relates to a surface refined sintered alloy suitable primarily as the material for construction, including parts for cutting tools, parts for abrasion resistant tools, parts for impact resistant tools or parts for decoration, and a process for producing the same and a coated surface refined sintered alloy comprising a rigid film coated on the surface refined sintered alloy.
N-containing TiC-based sintered alloy comprising the basic composition of TiC-TiN-Ni tends to be more excellent in strength and plastic deformation resistance as compared with non-N-containing TiC based sintered alloy with the basic composition of TiC-Ni. From this fact, the N-containing TiC based sintered alloy tends to be practically applied in wide scope even to the range of heavy cutting region or high feed cutting region when employed as the parts for cutting tool. In these application regions, for necessary of making tool parts low cost, the sintered alloy may be used in some cases without application of the surface of the sintered alloy with polishing or grinding, namely under the surface state after sintering as such under the state of the so-called burnt surface.
The N-containing TiC-based sintered alloy, when used under the state as such of the burnt surface, involves the problem that fracturing or chipping is more liable to occur as compared with the case when it is used under the state of polished or ground surface. As a representative example of the attempt to solve such problems of the surface layer in N-containing TiC-based sintered alloy, there is Japanese Provisional Patent Publication No. 101704/1979.
Japanese Provisional Patent Publication No. 101704/1979 discloses a sintered alloy having a hardness to 0.005 to 0.2 mm from the surface of the sintered alloy in the TiC-based sintered alloy which has been made 1.02-fold or less of the hardness at 1.0 mm from the surface. This Japanese Provisional Patent Publication No. 101704/1979 has inhibited oozing of the metal binder phase by making the oxygen amount larger in the surface portion than in the inner portion by increasing the CO gas partial pressure in the cooling process higher than the CO partial pressure in the temperature elevation and sintering processes in the whole sintering process to make hardness in the surface portion and the inner portion uniform, thereby solving the hardness embrittlement at the surface portion. However, because the concentration gradient of oxygen in the sintered alloy is utilized, oxygen must be used as the essential component and therefore there is involved the problem that the results obtained are still unsatisfactory with respect to strength and fracturing resistance.